What Money? Where?

In 2009, as he battled pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs quietly placed three of his California properties in a trust that shielded them from public scrutiny (and estate taxes). In the age of the Occupiers, there are several legal methods that the embattled 1 percent are using to hide their purchases and acquisitions.

Trusts These can drive a business and/or act as "family banks." They also allow the founders a chance to peek into the future. "The children can have the opportunity to learn to be financially responsible," Victoria Collins, a wealth manager in Irvine, California, says. "And you have the opportunity to watch them in that process." Plus, a trust can be called just about whatever a grantor wants — including not a trust at all. Michael Zuccarini, an attorney in Bellevue, Washington, has set them up for clients who did not want the word trust to appear anywhere on their checks. "People see the word trust and know you're rich," he says. "It's not info they want to share with their grocer."

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LLCs Limited liability corporations (LLCs) are wildly popular among luxury real estate buyers. For a modest fee ($200 in New York state, for example) a buyer can make a mega-purchase disappear behind a made-up name. It's possible to be too clever, though — as media mogul James Murdoch was when he bought Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s Manhattan townhouse last year. Murdoch named the acquiring entity Statler (after the ornery Muppet, an homage to Jim Henson, the house's owner before Bronfman), designated a close friend as its chief, and listed its address as 1211 Avenue of the Americas — the headquarters of dad Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Local media quickly cracked the case.

Private Foundations These can be set up — again, under any name — to further a passion, but they're subject to stringent rules prohibiting self-dealing. ""Before 1969," Zuccarini says, "people were setting up these private foundations and using them just like their bank — they could park money there, and largely do whatever they wanted with it." Private foundations for art collections raise particularly bright red flags. If a Degas, say, is donated to a foundation, it better not end up on loan hanging over the donor's fireplace.

Agents This is perhaps the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way to make a splash that nobody really sees. An anonymous principal can arrange, through power of attorney, for example, to have an agent act publicly on his or her behalf in a big purchase (in the way that an employee might act on an employer's behalf for the office's quarterly paper supply purchase). "It's all confidential," Zuccarini says, "and there never has to be a public record."

Write-Downs If all else fails, pretend there's not that much money in the first place — a move particularly handy with real estate right now. "Let's say there is some kind of undeveloped or semideveloped real estate, and it used to be worth $100 million," Alex Raskolnikov, a law professor at Columbia, says. "Now you think it's worth $60 million." But since all sorts of liquid assets took hits during the recession, "maybe you can value it at $45 million," he says. "Who knows? What everybody does know is that we're in a bear market."